


Not Many Things Make Me Miss Home More Than You

by corviferal (axolotlNerd)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, but they just brought me back here, i abandoned my writing for tabletop rpgs
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24338143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/axolotlNerd/pseuds/corviferal
Relationships: None





	Not Many Things Make Me Miss Home More Than You

I am realizing more and more, the longer I spend out here, that the people I’ve been surrounded by my whole life may not have been the good souls I once thought they were.

My mother was - is - an Orc. She fits the stereotype, though I saw her fight it. She did not want to be violent the way she was. At least, I don’t think she did. I’ve grown to question this, the longer I stay away from home. I’m not wise enough to know if this is a good thing.

My father loved her. He loved her so crushingly much that it hurt. She lived in the woods as a hunter, away from her clan, the old brutes that constituted her family. She would come to town on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on holidays to watch the festivities, but never participate in them. She loathed the townspeople. They loathed her back, but bought venison regardless.

My father was, in most respects, my mother’s foil. A loving and caring man to the core, who loved his family and his farm and by the gods, he loved his cows. And he loved my mother. He loves her still. 

She would buy from him. He would sell cream in bottles that she thought were cute, and she would boil it over a campfire and add sugar and shake it until it was thick and sweet and a comfort in the cold nights in the forest. She would stay by his market stall, quiet and perhaps just a touch frightening in the way she would stand. My father said she was lovely when she stood like that - something about it was like a guard dog, loyal and passionate and fearsome.

He tried to tell her this, but his words only took him so far. He wanted to tell her so many things, he said. Once, he wanted to tell her that she made him nervous, but not scared, that it was his favorite kind of nervousness. He tried to say it, that when she spoke, he wanted to hold every word right in the palm of his hands, afraid he might never hear her again. 

It’s love, he knew, and his family knew, but they had no clue what she was. They had only heard of a wonderful woman with a hard gaze and a smile so rare that he could have sworn his heart would pound right out of his chest next time he saw it. His family - my grandmother and aunt - they would hate her. They would run from her. They might have killed her. 

The fact that things ended well for him was a miracle, truly. Not only would his family condemn him - and by extension, me - my mother simply wasn’t interested. She had eyes for another.

While she loathed the townspeople, there was one man that would visit that she found to be fascinating. A noble from the city who called himself Dorian of House Eawnil, he claimed that bread and cheese from small farming towns like our own was far superior to ‘big city food’, a sentiment I am loathe to agree with. He viewed us like alchemists view their chemicals, as subjects, as tools. As something to be studied at his leisure. 

Perhaps that’s why he took a liking to my mother in return. He found her strange, I think - an Orc, separate from her clan as a choice of her own, making an honest living. Perhaps, she was nothing like his books had told him, nothing like the stories he’d heard. And when he saw that she had taken a similar interest in him, he was fine to use it to his advantage.

He left town, and my mother never saw him again. Two months later, she realized she was pregnant.

She did everything in her power to get him to pay for what he’d done, leaving her the way she did. She tried to tell the country that he would have a bastard son with a monster like herself, and needless to say, no one believed her. With no home, no support, not even knowing who the local doctor was, she was lost. 

The winter festival is a sight to behold in town, I’ve heard. They light candles, and those who can spare the resources hand out coats and blankets to those less fortunate. My father would sing their songs for me at home, when the snow would begin to fall and I would have nightmares. 

My father found her at the festival, though as she wouldn’t have dared to participate in the celebration, she would sit outside of town and watch, cold. She sat, arms crossed and knees pulled to her chest, shivering and biting her tongue. Wondering what would happen to her baby. 

“Douvrou?” She heard, alongside the hesitant crunch of snow. My father, in his robes and leather, cold as she was but searching for her all the same. “I haven’t seen you at all. People are talkin’ about you. Is everything okay?”

“So, you know my name after all, Cowboy. I’m honored.” She said.

“...I don’t suppose I can share the honor, can I?”

“Craig Raveneye. People call you Cowboy.”

My father laughed nervously. “It’s… An inside joke, I s’pose.” He made his way over to her, tentatively sitting in the snow. “You didn’t answer my question, though. What happened? I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

Douvrou, my mother, stayed quiet. She could hear the words coming from below, a tune, out of key and being sung by a group of drunken farmers as they celebrated. My father always said he wished he could read minds at that moment. She seemed to think something. My mother never elaborated on what she thought of them.

“Why do you want to know?” She asked. “Why do you care?”

“Because I’m worried. I don’t want people to say bad things about you. And if somethin’ bad happens, I want to be there. Even if I can’t help.”

She laughed. “You take such a strange interest in the tales of a monster like myself. You want to know that badly?”

My father nodded.

If what my father did was wrong or morally reprehensible, I’ll take care to stay ignorant to it. After he learned of my mother’s predicament, he came up with a plan - his father had passed away some month prior, and when he married, he’d become head of the household. This would mean that whatever he said would go, that his family could do nothing to get rid of Douvrou once they wed.

My mother was hesitant - she did not want to leave her and her child’s safety in someone else’s hands. She didn’t want to be bound to him when she wanted to leave. My father assured her that the second she wanted to leave, he would let her go, and then let her return, too. If she ever did not feel completely fulfilled, he’d let her do whatever she needed. “This is for your safety,” he assured. “I will not allow my wife to be a prisoner in her own home.”

Douvrou thought herself foolish for believing him. 

My father came home, giddy as could be. His sister looked at him strangely, and his mother glowered.

“What on earth has you actin’ happier than Ol’ Blue sittin on the porch chewin’ on a big ol’ catfish head?” His mother said, a small smile in her voice.

“It’s just wonderful!” He exclaimed. “I’ve convinced her to marry me! The woman I’ve told you about! The lady of my dreams!”

“What?!” His sister exclaimed. “Really? You ain’t even brought her to meet us yet! The hell?!”

“Oh, I know it’s sudden, but you gotta believe me when I say she’s the loveliest woman I’ve ever met. She’s fierce and speaks like the wind in the rain when she talks, and she don’t talk much at all, but I still love it when she does. She’s got these big strong hands, and she let me  _ hold _ them once, and she was so careful with me and it sent butterflies runnin’ through my stomach. And she’s got the greatest sense of humor, not lady-like at all, not something dad would have approved of but I love her for it, I really do, and she said she’d marry me!”

He could have gone on for hours. He could have told them about how she had tusks that curled up to her cheeks, and that one grew crooked and strange and he wondered how it would feel to kiss her; or he could have said that she was nearly seven feet tall and had the muscle to match her build; or he could have said that her skin was the color of the sky, and that when she blushed her cheeks and ears would turn purple and she looked so  _ alive _ .

His family didn’t like the idea of him marrying a woman they hadn’t met, but they couldn’t be bothered to stop him. Not when he seemed so happy.

When I first heard this story, I worried that my mother didn’t really love my father. I worried she’d just done it to protect me, and that she wasn’t happy here. I care for my mother, the same way every son does, so I asked her if she was happy. If she loved my father the way he loves her.

She told me that the night she fell in love with him was their wedding night. She had been desperate to simply get it over with, to make it through this disaster as quickly and smoothly as possible. My father, however, wanted this to be as magical as possible. He wanted this to be a celebration my mother could participate in, not simply watch from the sidelines.

They buried a bottle of bourbon in the backyard, where we would one day keep our chickens. My mother put a coin in her shoe after my father told her of an old superstition. He even convinced her to do the “something old, something new” tradition - she wore her old boots, a newly tailored dress, my father’s sister’s hair ribbon, and adorned her dress with small blue flowers. My mother thought it was ludicrous.

But when she walked down the aisle, no father to lead her towards her husband, she could understand the grandeur. Everyone was so happy, and in part, it was for her. She felt hopeful for her future. She could see herself really, truly happy, having been apart from her clan for so long. She could imagine a warm home and a bed and maybe even celebrating in the winter festival next year.

When my father lifted the veil - needing to stand on his toes to do so - the crowd went silent. But my mother couldn’t be concerned with that -instead, she saw the love on my father’s face. She saw the way the candle light bounced off his face and glittered in his eyes, and began to feel loved. She began to reciprocate.

Perhaps it was purely out of shock, but no one objected to the marriage. Craig’s mother left the church quickly, but fortunately his sister stuck around, even after he explained why the marriage was happening.

“You sure are somethin’. Both a’you. Mom’s gonn’ be livid.”

“She will, but she can’t do anythin’ about it now. I’m just happy.”

“I am, too.” My mother said, offering an awkward smile.

My grandmother and aunt left the house soon before I was born. My grandmother reamed out my father, and then left, claiming she couldn’t live with a savage for the rest of her life, and my aunt eventually got married herself.

It was late in the spring when I was born on the outskirts of a town that might never know my name. The bastard child of a self-proclaimed monster and the real monster that would never acknowledge me as his son. It would be a long time before I knew anything outside of my farm, but I would do my damnedest to make a name for myself.

My mother named me, and gave me step-father’s, my real father’s last name. She named me Koromak Raveneye, and it is a name I will wear proudly.


End file.
